The author of books such as The God Delusion (2006) is hardly seen as a someone with a sense of humour that is wry, forgiving, somewhat self-deprecating and balloon pricking. But this side does show up in the recently released second volume of his autobiography.

“There are a lot of funny stories, as you know, about people I have known, some famous and some not,” he said in a recent interview.

“I was originally going to write a single memoir, that’s what the contract said.

“When I got halfway through, I realized I didn’t want to do the second half chronologically. It’s natural to do the first half chronologically when dealing with childhood, school days, university and early career. What happened next is relevant.

“But, I thought that in the second half of life what happened next wasn’t necessarily very interesting. So it was probably better to split it into themes.

“It seemed to me to be awkward to change tack halfway through the book, so I thought better to have two books. I put it to the publisher and they were pleased with idea. It happened in all editions except the German one. They opted to stick to the original plan of one single, rather large, book.”

The memoir travels inside and out of Oxford. It talks about students and the joy of teaching. It enters the private world of the scientist and it places them in public forums.

His humour is aware of the ironies of life.

Dawkins’s serious and controversial side is so often presented in the press.

“It does present a different picture of the standard image, which I am not that keen on.”

That image weighs him down.

“I don’t particularly like to be a controversial figure. I particularly don’t like being accused of having no sense of humour.”

In these days of debate about the place of science in public discourse, having a sense of how ideas form is a useful contribution.

“Any academic who has spent his life in a university is accustomed to being open to arguments about interesting intellectual problems without shocking people.

“In a university setting, you can discuss moral problems. But there are people outside the university world for whom to even raise a question is unthinkable and beyond the pale.”

For example, these people think, Dawkins says, “how can anyone be so savage as to ask the question ‘what’s wrong with cannibalism?’

“You will end up concluding there is a lot wrong with cannibalism. But we should discuss it rather than shy away from it in horror.”

The now retired biology professor is also aware of how ideology interferes with science and the search for fact-based truths.

“I am worried about the deficit of knowledge about, and the state of hostility to, science in the general public. A survey done a couple of years ago in Britain found 19 per cent of the people thought it takes one month for the earth to orbit the sun. Twenty-seven per cent thought humans co-existed with dinosaurs. It’s ignorance because scientists haven’t done a good enough job of educating people I guess.”

He says that politicians tend to try to suppress science or ignore it when the facts of the matter go against their political or economic case.

Dawkins says he loved teaching at Oxford as a young man, but in his 50s, in the mid-1990s, he says he wanted a change.

That came about when Oxford created a professorship of public understanding of science that was bankrolled by Charles Simonyi of Microsoft.

In this job, Dawkins learned that, “in many ways I preferred lecturing to the general public than to students. Principally because students take notes. They aren’t listening, they are scribbling.

“When you are lecturing to the general public, you see lots of faces; some of them encouraging and interested and alive with comprehension. That’s a rewarding experience.”

His many public battles have also led to the establishment of The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, which began its existence in 2007 when he retired from Oxford.

The foundation operates mostly in the United States where he is continuing to try to counter ignorance about science.

In one instance, he says, the foundation has set up a program for middle-school teachers who, often when teaching science, don’t know very much science.

“Ignorance of evolution hurts them because they have to contend with pushback from parents and students, so we’ve got a middle-school teacher based in Florida helping other teachers learn how to teach about evolution.”

Another project is called Openly Secular, which is an attempt to raise consciousness, especially in the U.S., of the large number of secular people which, Dawkins says, is widely underestimated “especially by politicians who think it is their job to suck up to religious lobbies of various kinds. The non-religious aren’t organized and that’s what we are trying to do.”

Dawkins is in the U.S. twice a year for extended periods of time. This interview occurred during one of thos trips.

“There is an element of preaching to choir,” he says, “and that’s what we are trying to get away from.

“We do concentrate on the Deep South where it is most needed. People there who turn out to these talks are beleaguered.”

He says when he meets his public he often is greeted by an enthusiastic response.

“People often say I changed their life. That’s heady stuff for someone like me.”

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